CONGRESS. (COUNTING THE ELECTORAL VOTES.) 



167 



mand a hearing, the bill as amended, should it 

 become a law, absolutely requires the electoral 

 vote of the State to be counted. If a dispute 

 or contest has arisen relative to the appoint- 

 ment of electors, and the proper State author- 

 ities have determined who are the lawfully ap- 

 pointed electors, the bill as amended says the 

 vote shall be courted. If more than one return 

 of electoral votes is made from a State, and no 

 determination has been made under its laws 

 who, of the opposing forces, were lawfully ap- 

 pointed electors of the State, the bill as amend- 

 ed requires that the vote of those electors reg- 

 ularly given, who hold the certificate of the 

 Governor under the seal of the State, showing 

 that they were appointed according to the laws 

 of the State, shall be counted, unless rejected 

 by the concurrent vote of the two Houses, act- 

 ing separately. 



*' In the one instance only, where a question 

 arises as to which of two or more State author- 

 ities, acting under the second section of the bill, 

 and having made conflicting decisions as to law- 

 fully appointed electors from the State, is the 

 concurrent action of both Houses required to 

 decide as to the legally appointed electors from 

 a State. In case no decision can be reached, 

 of course the vote of the State will be lost ; 

 but that is an extreme case, and one not likely 

 to arise except in revolutionary times." 



Mr. Adams, of Illinois, in criticism of the 

 measure, said: 



"Whenever the two Houses of Congress 

 agree that a certain alleged return is the le- 

 gal vote of a State, their determination that 

 that alleged return is the legal return is the 

 counting of the vote of that State within the 

 meaning of the Constitution ; and whenever 

 the two Houses of Congress agree that a cer- 

 tain alleged return does not represent the le- 

 gal vote of the State, their concurrent deter- 

 mination that that alleged return is not the 

 legal vote of the State is equivalent to a refusal 

 to count the vote of that State within the 

 meaning of the Constitution; hence, my judg- 

 ment is that the entire scope of our power to 

 legislate on this matter must be confined to the 

 third contingency, namely, the case in which 

 the two Houses of Congress neither concur- 

 rently vote ' yea ' upon the proposition nor 

 concurrently vote ' nay ' upon it, but differ 

 in opinion, and one decides one way and the 

 other the other. The power of Congress to in- 

 tervene in such a case arises, in my judgment, 

 out of the necessity of the case, and the exer- 

 cise of our legislative power to meet the contin- 

 gency must be considered now to be in accord- 

 ance with the meaning of the Constitution. 



" There are several causes, Mr. Speaker, why 

 it may be determined that an alleged vote of a 

 State is not the real vote of the State. 



" In the first place the persons claiming to 

 be electors may not have been voted for by 

 the people of their State according to the pro- 

 visions of the Constitution and the laws enacted 

 by the State. 



"In the second place the persons assuming 

 to have been elected as electors may have been 

 ineligible to that office. 



" In the third place, admitting that they were 

 eligible and were duly elected, yet when they 

 met to cast the electoral votes it may be that 

 they did not cast them in accordance with the 

 Constitution and the laws ; and, fourthly, if in 

 all their acts they complied with the Constitu- 

 tion and the law, and they are eligible to act 

 as electors, and have been duly voted for as 

 such, at the polls, yet the persons for whom 

 they vote may not have been eligible to the 

 office to which they assumed to elect them ; 

 and, in my judgment, notwithstanding the 

 changes that have come over the character of 

 Presidential elections in this country, these 

 objections to the validity of an alleged elect- 

 oral vote stand in full force to-day, and will so 

 stand until the Constitution has been amended. 



" I am aware that some of these cases of in- 

 validity are not so important in our minds as 

 they were in the minds of the framers of the 

 Constitution. To us it may make little differ- 

 ence whether a person chosen as an elector is 

 a Senator or Representative or person holding 

 an office of profit and trust under the Govern- 

 ment. To us it may appear to make little dif- 

 ence whether the electors vote by ballot as the 

 law requires or not ; or whether they cast their 

 votes upon the day appointed by law or not. 



" To us accustomed to the choice of a Presi- 

 dential candidate by the convention of a polit- 

 ical party, it may appear of less importance 

 than it appeared to our fathers that the Presi- 

 dent elected should be a native-born citizen, 

 or over thirty-five years of age. Yet all these 

 provisions are still the provisions of the Con- 

 stitution, and in my judgment it is not our duty 

 to disregard them ; it is our duty to observe 

 them nntil in the wisdom of Congress and of 

 the people it shall have been determined that 

 the Constitution shall be changed. 



" The reason why I refer to these different 

 causes of invalidity is that, if the amendment 

 proposed by the House committee is adopted, 

 the only means which we have or can have for 

 enforcing these provisions of the Constitution 

 will have been done away forever. I know 

 that when the two Houses of Congress meet 

 here to count the electoral vote, the main ques- 

 tion present to their minds and present to the 

 minds of the people is the question which 

 Presidential candidate the people appear to 

 have preferred. And yet, so long as these 

 provisions regarding the eligibility of electors, 

 regarding the eligibility of a Presidential candi- 

 date, regarding the form and manner in which 

 the electoral vote shall be cast, remain as por- 

 tions of the Constitution, it is not only our 

 bounden duty to observe and abide by them, 

 but it is also the bounden duty of those two 

 Houses of Congress, who have a duty imposed 

 on them which is not imposed on us in passing 

 upon this bill, the duty, namely, of sitting here 

 in joint convention and deciding upon the elect- 



